We will be announcing speakers for The Story 2018 over the next few months. Here’s the speakers we have announced so far:

Marie Foulston is a playful curator and producer with a love of the mischievous and the unexpected. She was lead curator on the V&A‘s headline exhibition Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt and is co-founder of the UK-based independent videogame collective The Wild Rumpus.

Alison S. M. Kobayashi is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist whose hybrid work mixes documentary and fiction through video, performance, installation, interactive and illustration. Her performance Say Something Bunny! has received critical acclaim, is a NYTimes critics’ pick and was listed in Time Out’s 2017 top ten productions. Kobayashi has received nominations for a 2018 Drama Desk award and United Solo Special Award and is the recipient of the 2006 TSV Artistic Vision Award. She was a guest artist at the 2008 Flaherty Film Seminar and her work was the focus of a Spotlight Presentation at Video Out, Jakarta International Film Festival. She was a 2016 Yaddo and MacDowell Colony fellow.

Joel Morris & Jason Hazeley are among Britain’s busiest comedy writers. They have worked with Charlie Brooker, Mitchell & Webb, and just about everybody else, winning a BAFTA for the howl of pain that was 2016 Wipe and a Broadcast Award for Touch of Cloth. They write TV dimwit Philomena Cunk, worked on the Paddington films, and created the best-selling Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups series, as well as brooding Scandinavian detective Knut Angstrom for Radio 4. They were behind the spoof local newspaper The Framley Examiner, co-wrote the travel guides Bollocks To Alton Towers, and crafted artisan knob jokes for Viz comic for many years.

Patricia Fleming is Director at Patricia Fleming Projects, Glasgow. Patricia Fleming Projects represent eight of Scotland’s leading contemporary artists; Jacqueline Donachie, winner of the inaugural Freelands Award (2016), Christine Borland, Turner Prize nominee (1997) along with Ilana Halperin, Steff Norwood, Kate V Robertson, David Sherry, Jane Topping and the estate of Kevin Hutcheson.

She was born in Ayrshire and studied Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. After graduating in 1990, she moved to Glasgow and established the ground breaking initiative Fuse, an arts charity providing free studios, exhibitions and a monthly stipend to support contemporary artists living and working in Scotland. It ran from 1991-1999, supporting over 500 artists including Martin Boyce, Will Bradley, Jacqueline Donachie, Douglas Gordon, Jim Lambie, Ross Sinclair, Simon Starling, Mary Redmond, Eva Rothschild and Richard Wright. During this time Fleming established Fly, the first contemporary art gallery in the East End of Glasgow (now Market Gallery). She was curator at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow between 1999-2002. In 2003, she was the first curator for Wales at the Venice Biennale with the critically acclaimed exhibition Further – Cerith Wyn Evans, Bethan Huws, Paul Seawright and Simon Pope.

Finbar Hawkins is a Creative Director at Aardman, working  across games and apps for clients and Aardman own brands, as well as the development of new IP for animation and console games. At The Story he will be talking about the development of 11-11: Memories Retold, Aardman’s remarkable game telling the stories of Harry, a young Canadian photographer who has joined the war effort searching for adventure, and Kurt, a German engineer searching for his missing son. Set in World War One, the game’s unique storytelling and painterly graphic style completely reimagines how games can explore the emotional and social consequences of war.

Aimée Felone and David Stevens launched Knights Of in October 2017 in a bid to improve the diversity in children’s publishing, making inclusivity core to the DNA of the company by hiring as widely as possible. To celebrate their first birthday in October 2018 they launched a pop-up bookshop in Brixton that only stocked children’s books with a BAME protagonists. Of the 9,000 children’s books published in the UK in 2017, only 1% had a BAME lead character . The store was a great success, and a crowdfunding campaign to launch similar pop-up shops in cities around the UK has raised over £34k.

Justin K. Thompson is the production designer for Sony Pictures Animation’s latest feature film, the Golden Globe® winner and Oscar®-nominated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. For his work on the film, Thompson has received an Annie Award from ASIFA-Hollywood for Outstanding Achievement for Production Design in an Animated Feature Production and a nomination from the Art Directors Guild for Excellence in Production Design for an Animated Film.

Previously, Thompson served as the production designer on Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and its sequel Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs 2. In his role, Thompson created the look of the beloved film series.

With over 20 years of experience in the animation industry, Thompson has been contributed his work to some of the most groundbreaking television programs. Over the past ten years, he has made the transition to visual development and production design on digitally animated feature films.

Prior to joining Sony Pictures Animation, Thompson worked at The Orphanage Animation Studios, The Jim Henson Company and Lucasfilm Animation. His credits include How to Eat Fried Worms (art director), The Power of the Dark Crystal (visual development artist) and Viking (art director).

Thompson spent five years at Cartoon Network, receiving various credits on such television programs such as The Powerpuff Girls (key background design/storyboard artist) and Samurai Jack (key background designer). He also served as a visual development artist/background supervisor on Cartoon Network’s critically acclaimed hit, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, for which he was awarded an Emmy® for Outstanding Individual Achievement In Animation. Thompson was also part of the creative team that brought The Powerpuff Girls to the big screen, serving as both visual development artist and key background designer on the feature.

Thompson has also served as a visual development artist on a number of projects at Disney Television Animation, DreamWorks SKG Television and Film Roman.

Sara Wajid is Head of Engagement at Museum of London where she is working on the development of the new museum and calling Londoners to help shape the museum.

As a recipient of the Arts Council ‘Change Maker’ award to promote diverse arts leaders, she spent a year as Head of Interpretation at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where she led the controversial display experimenting with decolonial approaches, The Past is Now.

Before working in museums she was a cultural commentator and journalist. She is a trustee of the Pitt Rivers Museum and the founder of Museum Detox network of BAME museum workers.

Previous speakers at The Story include Jarvis Cocker, Nikesh Shukla, Inua Ellams, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Simon Munnery, Laura Dockrill, Alan Rusbridger, James Bridle, Gruff Rhys, Cornelia Parker, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, Kati London and many many more. You can see lists of speakers at previous here – 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.